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It's not hard to get the grand tour of the deja mi offices. Just ask founder Justin Miller to show you the basement of his house. The company, he proudly boasts, is a true Raleigh startup—no cushy renovated Durham loft space for his team!

Then again, it is a pretty nice basement—brightly lit, clean, and it seemed to fit about nine employees in a comfortably snug configuration. Sorry to call you out on this Justin, but if you want to claim the basement grunge mantle, you need to invest in a lava lamp, a Pink Floyd poster, and a beat up couch from 1973.

Of course, the magic of deja mi doesn't happen in its basement. The magic is happening all over your city, right now. Their app lets you can share and explore pictures and videos of the dining, business, and shows happening around you.

The most obvious venue for this is concerts, which is why they once marketed their app with a free show called deja fest. Concert goers can share pictures of their experiences to others in the crowd, or the venue itself, in real time.

The difference between deja mi and the gazillion other apps that kind of do the same thing? People actually use theirs.

Apple featured the app under "New and Noteworthy" in its app store. IBM used the app to curate content around conferences. They were even the Number 1 app in Algeria for a day. Algeria!!!!!

Believe it or not, deja mi is about to get even bigger. They've just inked a deal with WRAL to run their venue photos on the site's Out and About page. Search for Lilly's Pizza, and you'll now see some delicious photographic content submitted by deja mi users. It's easy to imagine deja mi sharing content with other partner organizations in the future.

And there's more. Deja mi is close to unveiling a beta version of a secondary app that will do something awesome. Justin wouldn't tell me yet. Apparently he'll be ready to show it off in a few weeks.

Justin did say that while the original deja mi app takes people about two minutes to understand, he can explain the new mystery app in just a few words.

I challenged Justin to do one better and to reveal the app's purpose in haiku form. He accepted. Now we wait.

James Kotecki

Guest Writer

James Kotecki is a digital media specialist with a passion for politics. His work has received multiple awards, national media recognition, and millions of YouTube views. He is currently the Director of Thought Leadership at Three Ships Media in Raleigh, North Carolina. And he has a website.